Installation by Jan Baker, RISD Kyna Leski is a teacher, architect and artist. Her book, The Storm of Creativity, is a thoughtful journey through the process of bringing something into form that does not yet exist. Leski does not take an authoritative approach, gratefully, and she leaves lots of room for her “map” to speak […]
Art Making
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The Right Way
“Guardians of the Secret”, collage by Barry Swyers, an artist and friend who passed away earlier this year. Artist Ben La Rocco in conversation with Craig Olson, on Hyperallergic: There is some kind of confusion in my nature with regard to received methods of doing things. I’ve always had it. I’m left handed, mildly dyslexic […]
Whales, Horses and the Hand
In praise of the hand (found on a trip to India several years ago) Laurie Fendrich (painter/writer partnered with painter/writer Peter Plagens,) has written thoughtfully about the concept of a “mature” or “signature” style. “All serious painters, no matter the quality of their work, inevitably end up with a mature style,” she wrote in the […]
Let the Mystery Be
“Tezoom”, from a new series that seems to have a mind of its own In an interview with the artist Claerwen James, she was asked about what useful advice she received while she was a student: One was from Bernard Cohen who was director of the Slade at the time. During a lecture he said, […]
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Practical Virtues
Lori Ellison: Untitled, ink on paper, 8.5 x 11″, 2006 (Photo: McKenzie Fine Art) Lori Ellison: Untitled, ink on paper, 8.5 x 11″, 2012 (Photo: McKenzie Fine Art) Over the nine years of writing this blog, I have returned frequently to the theme of staying open, vulnerable and accessible in the art making process. The […]
Art as a Well Planned Crime
One corner in my new show, “The Light Within”, at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery (September 5 – October 11.) The combination of metallic surfaces on the series to the right (“Silma 1-4”) and the chalky intensity of “Kannakam” on the gorgeously textured wall on the left pleases my eye. How to talk about the visual without […]
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Permeability
Somewhere between what is hidden and what is seen: A matchbook found at the bottom of a box of paints from my days on the Lower East Side in the 1970s. In Jane Hirshfield‘s slim but wisdom-packed book, Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry, she includes a poem written in 1000 CE by […]
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Playing From the Other Side of the Score
Skeepa, from a new series The New Yorker‘s Joan Acocella recently reviewed Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright by Sara Solovitch. Stagefright. Being a visual artist comes with plenty of baggage, but this isn’t one that is on my list of potential afflictions. Meanwhile this is a disabling condition that affects a […]
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Chase Away All Routine and Find the Singularity
Detail from a work in process: Learning how to know my own terrain Terry Theise‘s book, Reading Between the Wines (first introduced here), offers so many redolent parallels between winemaking and painting. And during a season when the land is in full expression, the analogies are particularly timely and apt. Consider this response from one […]
The Terroir-Driven Life
Mosel, the German valley most associated with Riesling wines (Photo: Friedrich Petersdorff) I’ve been laboring to write about (mostly) art making and creativity on this blog for almost 10 years. One of the overarching themes has been the search for language that comes in close, authentically, to the experiences I have when I am in […]